According to the AA, from the age of 17, female drivers are on average charged about half for their car insurance compared with men behind the wheel. The motoring organisation says that women pay around £1,800 while their male counterparts will pay almost £3,500.
There are a whole range of reasons why women’s car insurance is usually cheaper than the coverage offered for male drivers and none of it has to do with the common myth that women are ‘better’ drivers. Such vague terms have little traction in the insurance business anyway and companies look for more tangible reasons to offer women lower premiums.
The bottom line for most providers when setting the level of women’s car insurance is the inescapable fact that, on the whole, women make fewer and less expensive claims than their male counterparts. Women also have a tendency to drive more cautiously than men, which means that they end up with fewer speeding fines and endorsements on their licences.
Official statistics also show that women drivers chalk up significantly lower mileage than men – mileage is a key factor when determining the size of a car insurance premium. Government figures show that women average around 6,300 miles a year, compared with 8,000 for men.
Men are even able to benefit from this state of affairs. While there is no cheap male equivalent of women’s car insurance, there is also the possibility that they can piggyback on the policy of their female partner or relation. If a man becomes a named driver on a woman’s car insurance policy then they benefit from cheap premiums too – this often makes this an option worth looking at. If a man has their own insurance policy, adding a female partner or relation can often reduce the size of the premium too.
However, while female drivers are currently getting the best deals, the situation may not remain like this forever. Women’s car insurance may begin rising in the future, as evidence is emerging that women are increasingly falling prey to contemporary vices such as aggressive driving, competitiveness and road rage – as well as regularly driving longer distances than before, with a knock-on effect on that all-important mileage. Most of the evidence for this is anecdotal at present though and insurance firms are likely to continue charging less for
women’s car insurance until such factors are incorporated into official government statistics.
